Sunday, January 27, 2008

Results, January 25-27

On Friday the 25th, Hikaru beat Saki Maemura at a ZERO1-MAX show. Both Nanae Takahashi and Natsuki*Taiyo were pulled off this show and shows next week. It is claimed both are sick, but Irving and Frank Pozen both think this is a bit fishy. It's still unclear what the future holds for Chick Fights SUN.

Sunday saw four shows and both Toshie Uematsu and Shu Shibutani worked 3 of them. Let's start at Shin-Kiba 1st Ring with Ibuki. Mariko Yoshida didn't give out the card beforehand and there were some unusual matchups. Mio Shirai beat Mika "Megaton" Mizunuma, DASH Chisako teamed with Atsuko Emoto rather than her little sister and they beat Shu and Hanako Kobayashi. Yoshida taught arm-wrestler Yoko Yamada a lesson about puro, and Hiroyo Matsumoto and Io Shirai beat Tomoka Nakagawa and Sendai Sachiko in the main event. Apparently Emoto and Shu got into a scuffle after their match and Hiroyo talked smack about Emoto and Kyoko Kimura. It sounds like some possibilities are being set up for the May anniversary show at Korakuen Hall.

At the same time, JWP had a show at the Tokyo Cinema Club. Notable results included Arisa Nakajima pinning Keito in a tag match for what I believe is her first pinfall over a JWP senior, Tojuki Leon gettting a fall on Kaori Yoneyama in another tag match, and Kayoko Haruyama beating NEO's Etsuko Mita in her 10th anniversary match.

Speaking of NEO, they had the late afternoon slot at the Cinema Club. The quarterfinals of the NEO STAGE 08 tournament had some surprises. After Toshie Uematsu beat Shu Shibutani and Yuki Miyazaki beat Kyoko Kimura, the busy free-lancers ran off to the WAVE show. It turns out Misae Genki had an accident on Friday night and severed a tendon in her hand. She still worked, but jobbed to Hiroyo Matsumoto in just 2 minutes, a result that I doubt was the original plan. The main event saw another big upset as Atsuko Emoto used a Shining Wizard to beat Yoshiko Tamura. So the semifinals will be Toshie-Hiroyo and Yuki-Atsuko.

Back to Shin-Kiba and WAVE. After a time-limit draw between GAMI and Misaki Ohata, Manami Toyota used the Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex Hold to snap off Yumi Ohka's super challenge. The main event saw a twist. It was supposed to be GAMI, Kyoko Kimura, and X against Toshie, Ran Yu-Yu, and KAORU. But the mystery partner ended up being KAORU and Shu filled in on the Toshie/Ran team, but Shibutani lost to KAORU.

Finally, Apple Miyuki and Yuu Yamagata's tag team got knocked out of the K-DOJO tag league.